Emotional callousness and vicarious emotional reactions to the misfortune of others

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Abstract

Agnello & Lishner (2013) suggests that when presented with a person in
need, psychopathy is positively related to feeling positive emotion (amusement,
joy, humored) and negatively related to feeling empathic concern. Miller et al.
(2015) conceptually replicated that study and again found a negative association
between emotional callousness and empathic concern. They also employed an
outcome manipulation and found that emotional callousness was positively
associated with positive affect, but only in a condition where the ostensible
person’s need was unlikely to improve. The current study (N=179) provided a
direct replication of those findings while also examining whether psychopathy is
positively associated with desire for additional exposure to the person in need,
whose situation is unlikely to improve. After reading an article about an
ostensible person whose need situation was likely or unlikely to improve,
participants rated their emotional reactions and then chose to either read more
about that person, or about someone new. Consistent with previous studies, results
indicated a negative association between emotional callousness and empathic
concern. However, results also indicated little association between emotional
callousness and positive affect, regardless of need outcome. Additionally, there
was no association between emotional callousness and selection of the second
article when controlling for gender and other psychopathic traits. The results
suggest that psychopathic emotional callousness reflects low care about those in
need as opposed to sadistic enjoyment at the suffering of others.